Did you know that you can check a SAS macro variable to see if ODS graphics is enabled? The other day I wanted to write a SAS program that creates a graph only if ODS graphics is enabled. The solution is to check the SYSODSGRAPHICS macro variable, which is automatically updated by the SAS system whenever ODS graphics is enabled or disabled. (Thanks to Warren Kuhfeld for this tip!) The SYSODSGRAPHICS variable has the value 0 for "off" and 1 for "on."

For example, the following SAS/IML program checks to see if ODS graphics is on. If so, it creates a bar chart of a categorical variable. If not, it computes the count for each category and prints a frequency table:

ods graphics on;         /* -OR-  ods graphics off */
proc iml;
use sashelp.cars;  read all var "Origin";  close;
 
if &SYSODSGRAPHICS then  /* is ODS graphics enabled? */
   call bar(Origin);     /* optionally display a graphical summary */
/* always display a tabular summary */
call tabulate(Categories, Counts, Origin);
print Counts[colname=Categories];

The SYSODSGRAPHICS automatic macro variable is a recent addition to the automatic macro variables in SAS. You can read Rick Langston's 2015 paper to discover other (relatively) new macro features in SAS 9.3 and SAS 9.4.

SAS has many other automatic macro variables. In general, you can use automatic macro variables in SAS to check the status of the SAS system at run time. Some of my other favorite automatic macro variables (which some people call system macro variables) are the following:

• SYSERR, SYSERRORTEXT, and SYSWARNINGTEXT: Provide information about errors and warnings from SAS procedures. In my book Statistical Programming with SAS/IML I show how to use these macro variables in conjunction with the SUBMIT/ENDSUBMIT statements in SAS/IML.
• SYSVER and SYSVLONG: Provide information about your version of SAS. You can use these macro variables to execute newer, more efficient, code if the user has a recent version of SAS.
• SYSSCP and SYSSCPL: Provide information about the operating system. For example, is SAS running on Windows or Linux?

Do you have a favorite automatic variable? Leave a comment and tell me how you use automatic variables in your SAS programs.